


If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them

by GwenTheTribble



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Vulcan, Young Spock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 18:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11407830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenTheTribble/pseuds/GwenTheTribble
Summary: He forged himself to be sharp as a Le-matya’s claw, as the mind of a kolinahr master.





	If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them

Spock is a good Starfleet officer, and there is no course of action his father, or his grandmother, or the high council can take to alter this.  Vulcans do not need comfort, but if this thought comes to him when he is alone (and he is always alone) then it is of no concern to anyone else.

His parents lost three children before him, and he was to be the last attempt.  No one expected him to live, not even his mother, and yet each month he grew.  He kicked.  He was birthed and lived, and lived, and lived, as no one thought he would. This is the first lesson: he had to be strong enough to live through even his mother’s womb.  

They named him uniter, half of each other’s heart and soul, and he bore it. He bore it all his life. 

His father’s other son came to live with them when he was fifteen and spock was six.  The boy was raised by kolinahr adepts, and laughed in public. Shame rose through him, and he bore it, but more importantly, he did not show it. The police brought home Sybok for disturbing public peace, once, twice, three times, each time for calling for others to follow him.  But the city knew that it's not the call for followers that resulted in his arrests, it was the followers heeding his call.  Demonstrations followed, and then formal charges, and Sybok fled, out to space. Deep within himself he longed for his brother to take him with him.  When Spock meditated he searched endlessly for the place where this longing came from, so he could rip it out by the root.  His father forbade them to ever speak Sybok’s name.  Second lesson: this is what we’ll do if you fail. 

Bullies are a lesson he learned over and over.  He could not win against them, not by enduring and not by fighting back, not when people are resolved to think badly about him.  Third lesson: Try harder, be better. (Draw blood)(Break bone)(Savage them)(The real lesson: you cannot fight every battle alone).

Name any scientific concept, he could explain it.  He was one of the best students in the city, he stayed up late on work, practiced his lyre for hours, got up early to run into The Forge and back, as far as time will allow.  The Forge is where Surak began his pilgrimage, and that was what he thought of as he ran.  This was his pilgrimage.  If he could push himself far enough, if he could be better than all others, smarter and stronger and the most logical, then he could be Vulcan, and everyone would agree he was Vulcan.  So he pushed on, and he sweat and bled for Vulcan, to be known as Vulcan, which should have been his by birthright.  Yet still, there was the secret and shameful longing he had, to get as far away from home as he could, to go so far that no one had heard of him.  It could not be torn out, he learned.  It was not a root, it lived in every one of his cells.  He just had to bear it.  Fourth lesson: if no one sees your shoulders tremble, they did not tremble.

If only it had been a root he could have cut it out.  If only pride had been a root he could have cut it out.  If only his traitorous heart could have been cut out.  He could not bring himself to regret rejecting the VSA, even if regret was an emotion and he’d immediately need to quell it, roll it into a ball and throw it away.  But regret never came.  Perhaps this is the most telling part of it all: regret never came, not for all of his life.   

At the academy he learned to fire a phaser, under what circumstances to set it to kill.  He learned to swim a mile in twenty minutes eleven seconds.  He learned the rules and regulations and followed them.  His reports glow, except for the ones that say he is rigid and immovable.  

It did not matter, he graduated, he set records. Christopher Pike asked him to be his first officer and he signed on.  He forged himself to be sharp as a Le-matya’s claw, as the mind of a kolinahr master.  

The sons of Sarek were rebels and shames, and neither one would ever go home again.


End file.
